Love Over Matter (18 page)

By the amount of
interest
Mr.
Brooks is showing in his dead son’s twin (he’s now moved on to
reading the
Wall Street Journal
and actively ignoring us), you’d think we were
asking him to watch grass grow. Or paint dry. Pick your boring
clichéd analogy.

While I await my lemon-fresh tea, Mrs.
Brooks starts a rambling monologue in my ear that leaves me with a
couple of nagging questions, like: Do they make Botox for vocal
cords? (I’m suddenly grateful George’s mother hasn’t cozied up to
me before now.) And what is taking Aleks so long to slosh those
glasses full of sweet, honey-colored liquid?

I scoot to the edge of the settee and
offer, “Want me to serve those?” I mean, I’ve got loads of
experience waiting on people.

Aleks gives me the cold shoulder.
“Almost done,” he promises, clinking the pitcher against the final
tumbler in the quartet. He walks a glass over to Mr. Brooks and
then hits the trolley for two more. When I reach for the glass in
his right hand, though, he crosses his arms and thrusts his left at
me instead.

There’s not enough room on the settee
for Aleks to join us, so he leans against the desk and studies Mrs.
Brooks and me as we sip. From the reading nook, Mr. Brooks asks,
“Will you be in town long?”

“
Not really,” Aleks replies
with a shake of his tousled hair. “I’m assisting my father with a
research study, so I have to be home by Wednesday.”

Mr. Brooks raises an eyebrow. “What
kind of research?”

“
A field study at Camp
Laurel. It’s the final week, so I’m helping him wrap things
up.”

“
Fascinating,” says Mr.
Brooks.

I can’t take much more of this mundane
conversation without nodding off. “So, uh, Aleks,” I say, hoping to
goose things along, “don’t you have questions for”—I flail my arm
through the air—“these guys?”

“
Yeah,” he agrees, going
pale in the face. He takes a gulp of the tea and focuses on Mrs.
Brooks’s forehead. “If you don’t mind . . . how did you
end up with George?”

I’ve wondered that too, since Aleks
somehow landed with his biological father.

Mrs. Brooks starts hiccupping softly.
“Excuse me,” she croaks, an embarrassed hand covering her mouth. On
the subject of George’s adoption, she eventually says, “Oh, who can
remember now? That was so long ago.”

Well, that’s evasive.

A restless, dissatisfied (and quite
understandable) look colors Aleks’s face. “It’s just that
. . . my father . . .”

What exactly
is
Dr. Smullen’s take on
this?
I wonder.
Did he even know about George? If he did, why didn’t he reach
out?
I mean, I’m sure George would’ve
appreciated a relationship with his dad, even if the guy has a
history of fornicating with a traitor. As the saying goes, blood is
thicker than espionage.

Mrs. Brooks has gone from hiccupping
to coughing, drawing her husband out of his lair. From behind the
settee, he gives her a couple of quick jabs between the shoulder
blades, then proclaims, “That ought to suffice.” I twist around to
catch a smug grin on his face that quickly fades into a straight
line.

Aleks refills his glass, his hand
trembling as he sets the pitcher back on the tray. I get a pang of
guilt over bringing him here, since he’s clearly no match for the
Brookses, who have become exponentially more aloof and abrasive, it
appears, since George died. “Should we . . . ?”
I say with a head bob at the door. “Maybe we
should . . .” I can’t quite bring myself to suggest
leaving, as this might be Aleks’s only chance to interrogate the
two people (other than me) who knew his brother best.

Soon my hesitation is irrelevant,
though, because as Mr. Brooks makes his way back to the reading
chair, his wife starts listing toward me. Her frail neck bumps off
my shoulder before she sinks into a lump against the arm of the
settee. I give her thigh a pat, hoping to rouse her. “Lillian?
Lillian, what’s the matter?”

She lets out a sloppy gurgle, her
eyelids fluttering. “Erm . . .
something . . .” she says in a breathy voice. “I’m
dizzy.”

Mr. Brooks snaps to attention, parades
back over and takes his wife by the shoulders. “Is it your heart,
dear?” he asks, kneeling in front of her.

Not again. Please, God, don’t let
another person keel over from heart problems on my watch. I search
my shorts for my cell, forgetting we’ve been ordered to leave all
electronics behind. “Where’s your phone?” I ask in a panic, my
brain refusing to retrieve the information. “I’ll call
911.”

“
Let’s get you to bed,” Mr.
Brooks says, ignoring my plea as he hoists his wife to her feet.
She’s limp and clammy looking, her complexion the hue of baked
cement.

Aleks plants a firm grip on Mr.
Brooks’s arm. “Do you think that’s wise?” he asks in a tone that
defies argument. “She should see a doctor.”

His decisiveness knocks me for a loop,
the way it recalls George. And apparently it throws Mr. Brooks
off-kilter too. “You have a point,” he admits, staring
incredulously at Aleks’s fingers, which remain clamped around his
withered bicep. He pulls back and looks his wife in the face. “The
hospital is only ten minutes away. It’ll be faster to
drive.”

I’m sure he’s underestimating, but
whatever. “Here,” I say, offering my arm. “She can hold on to me.”
And she does.

In no time, Mrs. Brooks is loaded into
the front seat of the Camry. With his normal delicacy, Mr. Brooks
backs out of the garage, immune to the potential emergency on his
hands. “Geez, that was weird,” I say to Aleks, the garage door
humming to a close and sealing us inside. Instead of reaching their
target, though, my words evaporate in a void of stale air. “Aleks?”
I say, doing a pirouette.

But I’m alone.

“
Aleks?” I repeat. Maybe
he’s wandered off, a behavior George was famous for too.

The garage is locked, something Mr.
Brooks made sure of with his handy remote control before sputtering
out of the driveway, forcing me to take a tour of the gift shop
(a.k.a. Brooks Manor) before exiting.

The house is oddly still as
I ramble through, giving the impression of a museum. I want to call
out for Aleks, but the calm is too thick (read: menacing) to
shatter.
He must have stepped out of the
garage when I wasn’t looking,
I tell
myself.
That’s the logical
explanation.

I leave the mauve door unlocked while
I scour the grounds. If need be, I’ll make another sweep of the
house, though I can hardly imagine Aleks having gotten waylaid en
route to the great outdoors.

“
Psst! Aleks!” I yell into
a neat row of trees (topiaries, Mom calls them) on the west side of
the Brookses’ property.

The only reply is the
flutter of bird wings, a flock of pigeons flapping away from
me.
What an idiot,
I think, unable to refrain from berating myself.
You misplaced a boy—the friendly, attractive twin
of your dead love—within a hundred-yard radius of your front door.
Brilliant.

I’ve nearly completed the
loop back around to mauve-ville when a flash of movement in an
upstairs window—the Brookses’ bedroom, I believe—catches my eye. In
case I’m hallucinating, I give a couple of solid blinks, but the
image refuses to budge.
Nuh-uh,
I think.
It can’t be. Not
now. Not after everything I’ve tried to
 . . .

But it is.

Framed by a pair of brocade drapes and
knocking around without a care in the world is George—or Aleks. I
can’t tell which, since whoever it is goes from wearing George’s
green hoodie to Aleks’s striped tee every time my eyelids flap
shut.

I have no choice but to haul ass for
the Brookses’ bedroom, in hopes of catching the culprit, whoever he
is, in the act of . . . well, who knows what. I take the
steps two at a time, nearly spinning out at the landing. When I
round the corner for the master bedroom, what confronts me is, in a
word, curious.

“
George?” I whisper,
feeling ridiculous as my eyes widen on the scene. In TV cop-drama
speak, the Brookses’ bedroom has been “tossed”—dresser drawers
yanked out and tipped over, mattress shoved off its foundation,
closet contents heaped up and strewn about. Somehow I doubt a ghost
could have wreaked such havoc. Or at least not
George’s
ghost. Nor do I have
evidence to implicate Aleks in such a dastardly deed,
until . . .

“
Oh,” he says, moseying out
of the master bath. “How’d you get in here?”

The hairs on the back of my neck stand
up. “Excuse me?”

He stalks toward me. “I thought the
door was locked.”

“
Not the one from the
garage,” I say, unsure whether to go all kickboxing ninja on him or
turn tail and run. My gaze rolls around the bedroom, settling on an
empty box—a shoe box, it looks like—that has been shredded to
within an inch of its life. “What’re you doing?”

He throws a nod over his shoulder. “I
had to use the bathroom.” His hands rub across his thighs, as if
he’s drying them on his cargo shorts.

With gloves on?
I should be asking, if the sight of those thin
little surgical suckers hadn’t sent an icicle of terror dancing up
my spine. Maybe, for an encore, he plans to dismember me. “Ready?”
I say, like we’re just going to pick up where we left
off.

He cracks a smile. Or a smirk. There’s
no telling now. “Give me ten minutes?” he replies, as if he’s
requesting an audience with the Queen instead of burglarizing the
quiet suburban home of his dead twin.

I don’t dare move. “You want me to
stay here, you mean?”

He shrugs. SHRUGS! “Eh, it’s up to
you.” He twirls a finger through the air. “Just don’t breathe a
word of this to anyone.”

I’ll be lucky if I can breathe,
period. “Um, sure . . .” I say, setting my feet to
skedaddle. “See you in a few.”

chapter 15

Pick up! Pick up! Pick up!
Pick up!
I screech in my head, Ian’s phone
threatening to click over to voicemail, leaving me stranded with a
potentially homicidal maniac.

“
Smith and Wesson. We cock,
you hammer,” Ian jokes when he finally answers. Seriously? He’s
messing with me
now?
“Cass?”

“
Quick!” I blurt, my gaze
tacked to the kitchen door, through which Aleks might stride at any
moment. “Get over here! I need you!”

A chuckle floats across the airwaves.
“Whoa, Nellie. Deep breaths, in and out.”

I’m in no mood for his
patronizing mockery. “Something’s wrong,” I try explaining, “with
Aleks. He’s . . .
doing
things
.” Ha! I’ve got his attention
now.

“
What do you
mean?”

“
I don’t want to be alone
with him. Just come over,” I plead. It dawns on me that Ian is at
work. “If you can.”

I practically hear his teeth grinding.
“Meet me at the Hit & Run,” he instructs, referring to the
convenience store two blocks from my house. “And try not to get
followed.”

I can be sneaky when I want to, and
something tells me that, if ever there was a time to flex my covert
muscles, this is it. “Will do.”

* * *

“
Oh my God! Thank you!” I
squeal, throwing my arms around Ian’s neck as he hops out of the
Love Machine, which he’s shrewdly tucked into a secluded spot
behind the Hit & Run. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

He gingerly pries me away
from him. “What’s . . .
this?
” he asks, gesturing at my
disguise.

I pull off the baseball cap and
shades, let my hair down. “I had to improvise. Not bad,
huh?”

My
smile jumps to
his
lips. “So what’s going on?” he says, leading us to
a rickety-looking picnic table that is about to collapse under a
mountain of cigarette butts and bird droppings.

I kick a gooey ice cream wrapper out
of the way before I sit. “It’s Aleks,” I say. “I think he’s
evil.”

He bursts out laughing. “An evil
twin?”

“
Cut it out. I’m not
joking.” I make a pouty face, and he rolls his eyes. “He’s at
George’s right now, tearing the place apart.”

“
Like how?”

With a shrug, I say, “Ransacking
everything. Stealing stuff.” I frown. “I don’t know. When I caught
him, he just told me to leave.” A repulsive thought dawns on me.
“He might’ve poisoned Lillian too. I mean, right after he gave her
that tea, she got sick. I hope she doesn’t die.”

“
What do you want to
do?”

“
Wait for the cops,” I say.
And I’m serious. As soon as Mr. Brooks gets a gander at that
bedroom (and recovers from the enormous shock), a uniformed officer
will be beating a path to my door.

“
Where is he now?” Ian
asks.